


An Unexpected Nerf (Dart to the Eye)

by Ealasaid



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Nerf War, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Implied Dwalin/Nori, M/M, Maps, Work In Progress, slight Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-03-15 23:43:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3466445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ealasaid/pseuds/Ealasaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hobbit AU: where Thorin & company are nerf gun enthusiasts intent on reclaiming their crown in the no-holds-barred  Nerf Weapon Survival Competition hosted in Erebor's Lonely Mountain Adventure Park; Bilbo is a graduate student in the English department whose only experience burgling comes from evading library security after hours; and Gandalf is the pesky Dean of Graduate Studies who has absolutely no reason to be involved in any of this, except somehow, <i>he is.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which There Is Breakfast

Bilbo Baggins woke abruptly and uncomfortably—which is to say, he jumped right out of his skin and knocked his notes off his desk—as the door to his office banged open.

“Good morning,” said the elderly man in the gray suit at the door.

Bilbo squinted at him, and then at the clock hanging on the wall. It read a cheery 6:30 am, which meant that he had fallen asleep somewhere around two hours ago and halfway through his tenth or twelfth cup of coffee while pouring over his notes on his thesis. “Good morning,” he replied, bemused. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Indeed there is,” the man replied amiably. “I was told a Mr. Baggins had a space in one of the offices for graduate students in the English department. Are you he?”

“Um,” Bilbo said intelligently, and felt the side of the half-empty cup of coffee. Unsurprisingly (though still to his great disappointment), it was cold. “I am? I am. Good morning.”

“Are you saying it is a good morning, or that it is a morning good whether I wish it or not?” said the man with good humor.

“It’s not a good morning until I’ve had coffee,” Bilbo said frankly, creaking out of his chair. Creaking! As if he was the fusty forty-five his colleagues complained about, and not the respectable twenty-seven he actually was. “But I wish you a good one all the same. How may I help you?”

“I am Gandalf,” said his visitor. Bilbo hummed noncommittally, drawing a total blank. “The Dean of Graduate Studies,” the man added, when it became clear that Bilbo was not going to comment.

“Oh!” Bilbo said, surprised, and a little embarrassed at his initial lack of recognition. “Oh, good morning, sir.”

“Yes, yes,” Gandalf said, waving past the third iteration of  _good morning_  with slight testiness. “I am here about an  _adventure_ ; I believe you are the right fellow for the job. Would you perhaps be interested?”

“I, er, what?” Bilbo stared at the dean, confused. He picked up the cup of cold coffee and gulped it down in an effort to will himself to a state of better comprehension.

“An adventure,” Gandalf repeated, managing to convey both polite helpfulness and irritated impatience at the same time. “It is nothing overly dangerous.”

“Overly dangerous,” Bilbo echoed, wondering if this was a hallucination.

 “Perhaps you would prefer to discuss this over breakfast?” the dean asked delicately. “Why don’t you join some friends and I and we’ll bring you up to speed.”

“All right,” said Bilbo, and shrugged.

Eighteen hours and three hundred miles later, when Bilbo scowled down at an assortment of plastic guns displayed neatly on several shelves, he would blame the lack of sleep and caffeine for his absolute idiocy in agreeing to go along. But at the time, Bilbo’s reasoning for following Gandalf to the diner had been  _caffeine_  and  _I need to eat anyway_. That was little comfort after a six hour train ride and the distressing realization that he had left all his pocket handkerchiefs in the English department.

“The question is, what weapon are you most comfortable with?” the fellow sitting to his right asked him seriously.

“Coffee,” Bilbo said, attention riveted on the waitress ambling around the other side of the diner, pot in hand.

“That’d be a laugh,” said the young man sitting next to the fellow. He elbowed the first speaker—Bilbo vaguely remembered they’d been introduced to him as brothers, but he had not been paying much attention when he’d joined the gathering of assorted youngish chaps, and really, who could reasonably expect him to be awake at this ungodly hour when he had originally counted on at least another hour and a half before Bilbo had to be leading his section for ENG 115? “Modding your gun to spray coffee at your enemies—maybe you could distill it to a higher percentage of caffeine, would that be biological warfare?”

“Nah,” said someone else. “It’s chemical warfare, and so long as it’s not corrosive to people it’s perfectly acceptable.”

“Here, yes, thank you,” Bilbo said gratefully to the waitress as she flashed a smile and poured him a second cup. He added some of the creamer—vanilla!—and two of the sugar packets before draining half of it.

“Awake yet?” his neighbor inquired.

“No, thank you,” Bilbo sighed, and leaned back. Upon his second (more alert, but not yet aware) look, the man was pleasantly good-looking, younger than him by at least six years, and had the most interesting blonde braided mustache Bilbo had ever encountered. “I’m terribly sorry, but what was your name again?”

“I’m Fíli,” the young man answered courteously with a smile that hinted he knew exactly how Bilbo was thinking at that moment and found it hilarious. “And this is—”

“—Kíli,” finished his brother next to him. He had no mustache and only a bit of scruff dusting his chin, scraggly and dark brown. He also looked far more cheerful than anyone had a right to be in the morning, though that may have been because he was also likely the youngest and had a full cup of coffee surrounded by twenty-something empty sugar packages.

“Bilbo Baggins, pleasure to meet you,” Bilbo responded automatically. “What brings you here?”

“Same thing that brings you here, I expect,” said the smiley man wearing the bizarre hat to Bilbo’s right. It was highly improper to wear hats indoors, but he exuded a sense of genuine amicability and so Bilbo was inclined to let it slide. “Bofur, if you need reminding.”

“The Dean of Graduate Studies?” Bilbo asked archly, raising an eyebrow.

Bofur grinned. “Oh no, just pleasure,” he said. “I’m only finishing my bachelor’s anyhow.”

“Oh, at the Uni, too? What in?” Bilbo asked, interested. Bofur looked more around his age than the brothers’.

“Studio art—carving and suchlike,” Bofur said easily, and pointed at Fíli and Kíli. “Those two nuts are engineering, and Bifur’s in linguistics.”

“Oin’s at the medical school,” Fíli volunteered, nodding to the tired-looking fellow next to Bifur and two seats away from Bofur. “Then Gloin—”

“Accounting,” Bofur volunteered.

“Balin, a professor in the history department,” Kíli continued excitedly. He pointed to the portly man sitting next to him. “Bombur does things with food—”

“Food sciences,” Bombur corrected, nibbling a scone with the air of concentration usually reserved for wine tasting or particularly good cups of mystery tea.

“—and Nori doesn’t attend school, but Ori’s in the English department—”

“Oh dear,” Bilbo said, aghast at his own bad manners. “Hello Ori, I didn’t realize that was you.”

Ori, who was a graduate student three years behind Bilbo, and who shared office space with him, got a bit red in the face and shook his head quickly. “Oh no, no trouble at all, I could tell you weren’t awake. Pulled another all-nighter?”

Bilbo made a face. “It’s not going to write itself,” he said defensively, referring to his dissertation.

“Trying to get ahead before the competition?” Ori nodded sympathetically. “I understand. Though I thought you were tied up with teaching—I didn’t realize you’d be coming with us!”

“Of course I have classes,” Bilbo said, bemused. “It’s not like I’ve lost my stipend.”

“I’ve made other arrangements for Mr. Baggins,” Gandalf interrupted, answering Ori. “His advisor has agreed to allow him to make up his work at a later time; thankfully, Elrond is wonderfully practical about these things.”

“Wait, what?” Bilbo asked.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Ori said happily just as Fíli and Kíli let out twin sounds of horror.

“Your advisor is  _Elrond_?” Kíli demanded of Bilbo, aggrieved.

“Oh god,” Fíli moaned, head in his hands. “English fifty-seven still gives me nightmares.”

“He’s not that bad,” Ori defended.

“Elrond is a perfectly brilliant advisor, thank you,” Bilbo added, insulted.

The professor—Balin—sniffed tellingly, but then he was part of History, and everyone knew that History people couldn’t manage elegant prose to save their lives. (1)

“Come now, if I had wanted to start an interdepartmental war I would have scheduled the Chemistry and Business department parties for the same lounge,” Gandalf interrupted again, looking disgruntled. “Where on earth is Thorin?”

“Lost,” Fíli said succinctly, with a last shudder to shake off the remembrance of unhappier times.

“He messaged us for directions five minutes ago,” Kíli added, quickly diverted, and held up his phone.

“I’m right here,” someone said from behind Bilbo, sounding irritable.

“Hey!” the brothers cheered with toasts of orange juice and coffee as they stood up to greet the newcomer with hugs disguised as enthusiastic back slaps. Thorin turned out to be a surly-looking man with Kíli’s coloring and Fíli’s ability to grow facial hair set into a rather muscular build.

“Thorin’s our cousin,” Fíli said to Bilbo cheerfully. “Thorin, Bilbo; Bilbo, Thorin.”

“Bilbo is the burglar I told you about,” Gandalf said from the other end of the table. The two waitresses, who had arrived bearing several plates of scrambled eggs and sausages, looked askance at the dean, and hurriedly began doling them out before they overheard any more incriminating conversation.

Thorin settled himself into a chair next to Balin and studied Bilbo dispassionately as Fíli and Kíli jostled their way back to their seats. “He looks like he belongs in a library, not raiding an enemy outpost,” the cousin said.

Bilbo caught one of the waitress’s eyes and held up his mug in a silent request for a refill. It was far too early to be bothered with some stuck-up muscle-bound twit disparaging his enemy outpost raiding ski—“Hold on a second, raiding enemy outposts?” Bilbo asked disbelievingly. “ _What_ enemy outposts?”

“The ones in the no-holds-barred Nerf Weapon Survival Competition,” Gandalf said. “The Lonely Mountain Adventure Park in Erebor hosts it every year.” Fíli thoughtfully handed Bilbo Kíli’s cup of coffee, which turned out to be so loaded with sugar Bilbo was shocked Kíli wasn’t bouncing off the walls.

“You said you would find us someone capable of sneaking, scouting, and burgling,” Thorin told Gandalf thunderously all the way down his imperious nose.

“For heaven’s sakes, the fellow hasn’t even spoken two words to you,” the dean retorted, glowering impressively down his even larger nose and still managing to appear taller despite being seated in a cheap wooden chair.

Whether it was the caffeine sluggishly working its way into his system, the fugue of silliness sleep deprivation encouraged, or the more usual irritated attraction, Bilbo felt his nerves fizzing pleasantly at the sight. “I’m perfectly capable of any sneaking you might require,” he pointedly informed no one in particular, sipping Kíli’s coffee with great dignity as a smoldering glare began to toast the side of his face. “Goodness knows I’ve had enough practice evading the security in the library after hours.”

Ori nodded helpfully. “It’s true, he’s even managed to find me some books after hours,” he vouched earnestly. “They have closed-circuit cameras and everything.”

“Well, these are the waivers if you’re keen on settling this now,” Balin said genially, pulling a thick folded sheaf of forms out of his suit pocket and passing it down the table through Gloin, Oin, Bifur, and Bofur, who presented it to Bilbo with a flourish.

“Right,” Bilbo said briskly, scanning the first few lines. _I, the undersigned, do hereby absolve the Lonely Mountain Adventure Park of any liability in the event of injury, including but not limited to permanent maiming, brain damage, infertility…_ “Incineration? What’s this for, again?” he asked Gandalf, more from amusement and much, much less from the concern his future and more-awake self would fret over. Also, it resulted in an engaging peripheral view of Thorin’s glower deepening to a murderous scowl.

“Nerf gun competition,” Fíli supplied helpfully, holding Bilbo and Kíli’s mugs out to the wandering waitress to fill.

“For which you’ve been excused from the next two week’s appointments, responsibilities, and deadlines by your advisor,” Gandalf added.

“Wonderful,” Bilbo said, and signed the bottom with a flourish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) - The joke is that my degree is in history, and that as a history teacher myself, I am far more obsessed about excellent writing and writing practice than most English teachers, including my mother.


	2. In Which There is Lunch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At least Bilbo is fitting in some of his meals!

After sleeping through half of the train ride east, Bilbo began to think that perhaps he had rushed into things a little too quickly.

“I can’t believe it,” he said, aghast, patting his pockets down with increasing frequency as adrenalin shot through his system and completed the process of waking up muttering bleary ‘good afternoons’ to his traveling companions had started. “I forgot to bring my handkerchief!”

Kíli snorted from across the train table. “You use handkerchiefs? _Actual_ handkerchiefs?”

Fíli thumped him in the shoulder. “Just because _you_ never bother to use one doesn’t mean others aren’t familiar with them,” he teased.

Kíli shoved him and tweaked a mustache braid in retaliation. “You don’t use them, either.”

“I do too!”

“I don’t have any handkerchiefs, but I do have some kleenex if you’d like to use it,” Ori offered, raising his voice a bit as the two brothers began to scuffle.

“That’s very kind of you, Ori,” Bilbo said, moving his legs around so he wouldn’t get kicked, and sighed. “It’s just not the same, you know? Just think of what my family would say about my impropriety! Forgetting handkerchiefs, indeed.”

“I know what you mean,” Ori said wistfully, following Bilbo’s example of evacuating exposed limbs from the danger zone. “My oldest brother Dori—remember, he visited one time for tea? I don’t think he remembers I’m in college with the way he’s always after me to wipe dust off my face or straighten my waistcoat.”

“Thank goodness my mother never had time for such things. Well, besides the general,” Bilbo confided. “It was a dreadful scandal in the family, the way she let me run about. But she did those sorts of things; she went on adventures, too! Oh yes, highly improper.”

“If it’s highly improper, what are you doing with us, then?” Kíli demanded. He pulled a face, looking aggrieved, and leaned on his brother. “Why, Fíli? Why does everyone dislike us so?”

“Have you seen yourself lately? You’ve got a right ugly mug,” Fíli said unsympathetically and shoved him off.

“Oh, well, everyone’s like that in the Shire,” Bilbo said uncomfortably, and shrugged with studied nonchalance. “It’s ‘daring’ for me to go away to university, for instance—most of us stay home and go to the local community college, or take courses online. Only the well-off bother to go away for an education, and they always return home in the end. Since I haven’t finished, it’s not like anyone will notice if I go off; and if Elrond made allowances, he obviously thinks I should come along.”

“The Shire sounds homey,” Ori said. “And a bit close-minded, but like a nice little community.”

“It is very countrified,” Bilbo acknowledged, and waved it away, along with his disappointment over forgotten handkerchiefs. Brooding was hardly practical, or productive; and besides, he could sit comfortably again now that Fíli and Kíli had called a truce. “But tell me—what exactly is this thing we’re going to go compete in? I signed all those waivers, but they had very little information beyond potential liabilities, and I really have no idea what you’d need a burglar for.”

“Oh, well,” said Kíli, leaning back and trading a look with his brother. “It’s a very long story. I don’t even know it all, no one’s ever told me.”

“The competition itself is fairly straightforward,” Fíli explained to Bilbo. “Everyone is sent into an arena. They have a marvelous one in Erebor!”

“It’s huge,” Kíli said, eyes shining. “And you can play paintball through most of the year when the nerf competition is done!”

“Anyone can enter, provided they pay the fees. Teams up to fifteen are allowed to register, but individuals are welcome too. The contenders are permitted to select a weapon before they enter from the selection provided by the Park, but it’s all factory quality,” Fíli continued.

“Factory quality is code for ‘absolute crap,’” Kíli interjected.

“Which is perfectly fine, because the competition isn’t just about who can survive the longest,” Ori contributed, more helpfully. “There are loads of useful materials and tools hidden throughout the arena, and a significant part of the competitors’ scores depend on how well they upgrade their weapons.”

“What constitutes surviving in combat?” Bilbo asked curiously. “If it’s based on number of hits or something, how do they track that?”

Fíli beamed. “ _Excellent_ question,” he said. “They had a lot of trouble with that at the beginning—no one wanted to follow the honor system when they were invested in the modding aspect of the war. Now, we all get wristbands to wear in the arena. They can tally the number of times you’ve been hit—I don’t know how they do it, it’s some sort of _really_ sophisticated tech—and make sure you’re not in the process of dying, because some people get so absorbed in the fight they refuse to stop—”

“There was someone a few years back who did that,” Ori added. “An epileptic? Or an asthmatic? I can’t remember precisely, but the girl either didn’t realize she was in trouble or she refused to leave even though she was in trouble, and she had a terrible accident. It was in all the newspapers. After that, they started keeping tabs on the player’s health.”

“Right,” Fíli affirmed. “Anyway, we’re all let into the arena through one of the nine gates. It’s random which gate you’re let in through, they draw names out of a hat in front of everyone.”

“Is it such a big deal?” Bilbo could not think of what advantage knowing where you were starting in the arena would get you.

“Oh no,” Bofur said dismissively, coming up to the table with his floppy hat, floppy hair, and cheerful smile. He handed out several sandwiches and bottles with a short ‘lunch, lads!’ After a brief interlude of sandwich-passing and a short spat over who got what kind, Bofur slid in next to Kíli and went on. “It’s just practical, because you don’t want everyone to start in the same area when you’ve got such a _large_ arena to explore, and also because sometimes fights will break out over the supplies closest to that spot.”

“Terrible fights,” Kíli agreed through a mouthful of tuna salad. “Absolutely awful; they show the highlights on the news.”

“Lots of knifings,” Fíli added seriously. “Three years back, a couple _died_.”

There was a beat of silence around the table while Bilbo gaped like a fish, feeling sudden, overwhelming dread. People _died_ in this competition? And they still held it every year? How was that even legal?! And he’d _signed up_ to enter the damn thing? Bilbo’s mind reeled, the only coherent thought the inane _but I haven’t even finished the rough draft for my thesis!_

Then the brothers burst into laughter. Bofur grinned and tried to cover it by taking a pull from his beer.

“That isn’t funny,” a familiar voice said coldly from behind Bilbo. He twisted around to see Thorin’s characteristically grim glower, brows furrowed in disapproval at Fíli and Kíli. Everything from the set of his shoulders to the way a muscle ticked in his jaw, barely visible above the hairline of his beard, projected barely-restrained violence. It was an intimidatingly attractive look on him. “You think incidents in the arena are a joke?”

Bofur coughed and looked at the table top. Fíli winced; Kíli squirmed.

“We didn’t mean anything by it, coz,” the younger said quietly.

Thorin made a noise that could best be qualified as a derisive growl and stalked to the end of the carriage in lieu of an actual answer.

“Don’t worry, lads,” Balin said softly, coming up behind Bilbo much like Thorin had done moments ago. For a man in a tweed jacket, he looked unusually somber. “Thorin’s got more cause than most to get offended over such talk.”

Ori looked troubled. “Is this the part no one’s told us yet?” he asked the professor.

Balin snorted. “Oh, yes. I suppose so. See, Thorin and his grandfather used to pair up to compete back in the early years of the competition. They always did well; they held the title of reigning champions up until ten years ago, when a competitor named Smaug made his debut and knocked all the other competitors out of the game within two days.”

“I remember hearing about that,” Bofur commented. “But I never heard the details. What happened?”

Balin shrugged. “Somehow, the fellow got ahold of some sort of combustible substance and modified his cannon to shoot flames. When Thorin and his grandfather faced him on the field, Thrór’s beard caught fire and they were forced to forfeit in order to get help.”

“Oh my,” Bilbo said, taken aback. He supposed it wasn’t as bad as knifings, yet it was still extremely unsettling; that bit about incineration in the waiver suddenly made a great deal more sense.

“The next year, they lasted a bit longer,” Balin continued, voice very dry. “Smaug decided that it wasn’t very fun when the competition ended so soon. But Thorin and Thrór never made it to a face to face confrontation, for that was the year that Azog and Bolg first entered the annual war.”

“Oh,” Ori breathed. “I heard about them.”

Balin nodded and picked up the threads of his tale again. “Azog and Bolg faced off against Thorin and Thrór. That year, they had expanded their team to include Thráin, Thorin’s father, and Frerin, his younger brother, along with some cousins—my brother Dwalin and I, and our father. We numbered seven.”

Here the professor paused, and an odd look came over his face. “It was very brutal,” he said eventually. “Frerin and my father were knocked out of combat almost as soon as we fell on them. They had an alliance with some other team who were happy to lay down covering fire from off the field. Then Thrór was firing at Azog point blank.”

Now Bilbo knew why the man was in History—clearly he was one of those people who were born storytellers.

“Later, Azog claimed that Thrór laid hands on him first; whether it is true or not is up for debate, as no one saw for sure. But his response was to club Thrór with his weapon, and Thrór went down and stayed down.

“Thrain and I had taken care of the allies and we were coming back to the field when Thorin came to his grandfather’s defense. At some point he’d lost his weapon, so as he ran forward he swept up an old oaken branch, which he used to strike Azog’s weapon from his hand. In the process, he broke Azog’s arm.”

Fíli and Kíli both sucked in a gasp, jarring Bilbo back to reality. He couldn’t believe it. He _could not_ believe it, it was too ridiculous. But looking at Bofur’s avid interest, Ori’s deep disquiet, and the brothers’ quiet awe, Bilbo began to feel like he was getting into something much, much deeper than he had reckoned with.

“Everyone involved was promptly hauled out of the arena, of course,” Balin went on with a brisker tone. “There was a lot of contention over sorting out who did what first. Thrór wound up with a severe concussion and memory loss and didn’t remember the actual fight, so Azog’s word was the only word, and his only penalty was his removal from the competition. Thorin was not let off so lightly, as physical combat is expressly forbidden. He was banned from play for five years.”

“What?” cried Kíli in tandem with Bofur’s “No!”

“How is _that_ fair?” Fíli demanded. “He knocked Thrór _out_!”

Balin shrugged. “That was how it was ruled,” he replied. “Azog’s fault could not be clearly determined, but everyone saw Thorin pick up a non-nerf weapon and use it to assault Azog physically.”

“That is absolutely unfair,” Ori declared, fire in his eyes.

“Will we be facing them this year?” Bilbo wanted to know, unfamiliar iciness creeping up his spine.

“Ach, unlikely,” Balin said dismissively. “The two of them haven’t played in the past three years.”

“So it’s just Smaug, then?” Ori asked.

Bilbo started. “What?” he said, alarmed. “The flamethrowing nut is still competing?”

“Oh yes,” Balin said, looking surprised. “Hasn’t anyone told you?”

Bilbo eyed him with sudden, terrible suspicion. “Told me what?”

“Loads of people have stopped competing because of him,” Fíli said unhappily. “It’s ruining Erebor’s reputation in the nerf field. They might cancel the competition if interest in it gets any lower.”

“That’s why we need a burglar,” Kíli explained grimly. “We need someone to steal his fuel source.”

“He _always_ manages to find something to use,” Fíli said. “It’s uncanny.”

“And since he incorporates it as a modification to his nerf gun—”

“—it’s not strictly prohibited for him to use it.”

“Oh,” Bilbo said weakly, and repeated it when Balin nodded and smiled in response to Bilbo’s inquiring look of horror. “Oh. Oh, dear.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE PLOT THICKENS in as predictable a manner as anyone who's read the book/seen the movies can predict! Well, sort of.


	3. In Which There is Dinner (But No Dessert)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little more roux to the pot...

Bilbo regretted the flourish with which he had signed his name to the waivers. He regretted the pomposity of the gesture, his poor impulse control, and the collective attractiveness of the other members of Thorin’s Company that prevented him from successfully reconsidering his decision as he packed his bags and got on the train to Erebor.

He should have done his research! Really, Bilbo had no excuse. It was well known throughout the back rooms of the University—those quiet niches where smoking detectors were disabled and the no smoking signs pasted over and squashy armchairs hosted the eminent bastions of academia, filling the space with murmuring conversation and low chuckles around smoke ring competitions—that Gandalf was, put politely, eccentric even for _them_. In other words, he was No Good.

But Bilbo, fond of his creature comforts as he was, did not often spend time in those back rooms, and so had not heard fine points of Gandalf’s Strange Doings. Rumors, yes, and the sly quip accompanied by furtive checks around one’s person to ensure no unwanted eavesdroppers could listen in, but Bilbo had not heard the details of the Affair With The Shipwright or the Venture Into Psychology, let alone the dreadful Second Interdepartmental War; and so Bilbo had not known that anything supported by Gandalf was sure to be—in vulgar terms—a shitshow, or that declining his offer fifteen hours ago in Bilbo’s cramped, shared office was the wisest course of action.

Now, it was all too clear what an utter disaster this enterprise was.

“What do you mean, we’re going into the arena tonight?” Bilbo demanded, voice inching into levels of dangerous shrillness.

“The competition begins at midnight,” Bombur said, looking puzzled. “I thought you knew!”

Bilbo looked down helplessly at the stack of empty plates, only a scattering of crumbs to mark the brief existence of the eight orders of fried fish and potatoes and the six pints of a very excellent beer he and Bombur had polished off.

“This can’t be real,” he said, aghast. He wasn’t finished with his meal and they were already hurrying him out the door!

“We’ve still got a few hours,” Bofur said, mistaking the cause of Bilbo’s anguish. “I’m sure you’ll digest that lot in time!”

“But what about dessert?” Bilbo wailed to no one in particular.

Bombur brightened. “We can share something,” he offered.

“Any more food and we’ll have to roll him in,” Dwalin growled. Dwalin had just joined them for dinner; apparently he’d been in Erebor for much of the day, and was the last member of the expedition. Physically, Balin’s brother was thoroughly terrifying with his intimidatingly muscled bulk. He was also just as surly—if not more so—than the erstwhile Thorin. The fact that they were best friends had not surprised Bilbo in the slightest.

“We’ll not be carting you around if you get sick, burglar,” Thorin informed him, standing up and pushing his chair back in. “We must press on. We have but an hour before our attendance is required for the issuance of equipment.”

“This is a travesty,” Bilbo muttered to himself, pinching the bridge of his nose in despair. “No dessert, indeed!”

“Ach, well, perhaps we’ll get something together when the competition is over,” Bombur commiserated, getting up as the others all started to stand and stretch, preparing to head out.

Bilbo sighed and followed along. They had left their things at a hotel, which Bilbo had assumed was where they were staying for the night; he hoped they would be able to run back and collect some things, like an extra pair of underwear or three. And perhaps he could change into something a little sturdier than his casual slacks; they weren’t really made for a camping trip in a high-stakes survivalist competition.

This wish, thankfully, was granted with a brief stop at the three rooms they’d gotten for the week. Bilbo even had enough time to slip into the lobby gift shop and purchase three overpriced but serviceable handkerchiefs before Thorin was rounding everyone up with such a thunderous expression that even Kíli did not venture a crack about it. He hustled them out the double doors and onto one of the trams, which rattled and clacked through the city until, at last, they reached the arena on the edge of Erebor.

The entrance was thronged with people, which surprised Bilbo. He had assumed that the Oakenshields and the rest of the Company were just a bit barmy, obsessed as they were with winning this competition, and Bilbo had not given a thought to whether or not the competition was actually popular. But popular it clearly was, if the way a few glum-looking reporters and photographers milled around was any indication.

A shout went up; a limousine had stopped in front of the entrance, and a tall, lithe man wearing an absurd amount of gold jewelry got out, escorted by a lovely young woman in a slinky blue dress. The reporters all hurried up to him.

Bilbo, who happened to be standing near Thorin for no real reason (not even for how monumentally fit the man’s ass was in those jeans), heard an ominous grating noise as Thorin ground his teeth together so hard that the cords stood out in his neck.

“Smaug,” Fíli muttered to him from the other side.

“Let’s go,” Thorin gritted out. “While they’re distracted. Quickly!”

“Will it really matter if he sees us?” Bilbo asked Fíli in undertone, a bit annoyed, but scurrying along behind nevertheless.

“I would prefer to keep the element of surprise for as long as possible,” Thorin growled, overhearing, as he led them through the doors.

“Is that a backhanded way of stating your intentions?” Bilbo asked dryly, before he thought better of it. Fíli made a suspicious choking noise. It threw Thorin for the briefest of moments, only noticeable by the way he jerked in a sort of aborted double-take, but before any possible response could be made, a very tall figure in _grey camouflage_ swept up to them.

“You look ridiculous!” Bilbo sputtered, taken aback once again by how outlandish these enthusiasts were. Really! A grown man—well they were all grown men, but a _dean_ —in camouflage—for a nerf competition? He knew propriety was the least of concerns for people outside the Shire, but this was a little much. For heaven’s sake, even irrationally obsessive Thorin had restrained himself to serviceable denim and a muted plaid.

Gandalf gave him a queer look. “Haven’t you been privy to the details of the Second Interdepartmental War?” he said in a manner that suggested great affront. “Has Elrond been so lax in your education?”

“We can chat when we’ve signed in,” Thorin said curtly, cutting in. “I presume you’ve seen Smaug?”

“Yes,” Gandalf said, and suddenly he looked serious. “There are things I must tell you; let us find somewhere private.”

The sign-in area turned out to be a set of tables in a large meeting room. Thorin walked up to one of them and proceeded to introduce everyone as being part of his Company, and yes, they had all signed the appropriate forms; yes, Mr. Baggins’ forms had been faxed in that morning; yes, there were fourteen of them, total.

“You’ll be entering from Gate 6,” the attendant finally said with a bright smile, and handed Thorin a sheaf of tickets and a printout map. “Present these with a photo ID at the door, and they’ll allow you in if you would like to wait there before the equipment selection.”

Then they hurried through a number of corridors, the last of which opened onto a small shuttle station. “The arena’s huge,” Ori muttered to Bilbo, seeing his eyebrows shoot up. “Like, three square miles? So they have a little shuttle to take us around the perimeter.”

“That large?” Bilbo asked mildly, impressed despite himself. “How many people compete every year?”

“Oh, a couple hundred,” Ori said casually. “There are usually some large teams and then a number of smaller groups, and there’re always a dozen or so pairs who just come for a laugh.”

A small train with three empty carriages slowed to a stop. None of the other participants appeared to be hurrying to any gates yet, so they trooped into the last one and spread out through the empty seats as the doors closed.

Thorin and Gandalf sequestered themselves in one corner; luckily, Bilbo was quick on the take and snagged a spot a respectable distance from them, neither too far to hear their conversation, nor too close as to be obviously eavesdropping. Ori sat next to him and continued to chatter about the demographics of the participants, which both added to Bilbo’s cover of innocence and made it a bit more difficult to listen to the dean and the engineer.

“There will be trouble in the arena,” Gandalf was saying quietly as Ori rambled on popular date ideas in Erebor. “I’ve heard disturbing rumors indicating that your participation this year has been noted—and not by any admirers.”

“I’m not particularly worried about whether Smaug is upset or not,” Thorin said shortly, clearly dismissive of the importance of this fact. “I wouldn’t think he would rate us as any threat higher than a mild nuisance, considering we have not actively tried anything in years.”

“It’s not Smaug who wants your head,” Gandalf replied sharply with an edge of annoyance in his tone. “Someone has been passing out photocopies. Smaug does not actively campaign against anyone outside of the arena; he’s a recluse.” There was a quiet rustle, like paper being unfolded.

“…and in the past few years, there’ve been two teams that wear green and yellow and go as ‘the Goblins,’” Ori was saying now, “like ‘the Goblins’ team 1 and ‘the Goblins’ team 2, who register separately but usually wind up working together for a significant part of the game. And then there’s…”

“…this is insanity,” came Thorin’s voice, rough with some kind of emotion. “Who is even participating, who might make such threats?”

“I was unable to get access to the registry,” Gandalf said, “and the source of these flyers could not be traced—officially. Unofficially, there are rumors of someone named the ‘Defiler.’”

“Is that a known alias within the community?”

“I couldn’t put a face to it, but this individual has a reputation for both brutality and shady plays…”

“Bilbo?” Ori asked, waving a hand in front of his face. Bilbo blinked, startled.

“Er, yes?” he replied hastily. “Sorry, got lost in thought there for a moment.”

Ori gave him a skeptical look, gaze sliding past Bilbo to the corner where Thorin and Gandalf sat in council, and raised a questioning eyebrow when he redirected his look at Bilbo. Bilbo set his face in a look he hoped conveyed how unimpressed he was by Ori’s stellar skills in deduction.

“You’ll have to tell me when you can,” Ori muttered. “But we’re coming up to our stop right now, so—it’ll have to be in the arena, possibly.

“Two brains are better than one,” Bilbo agreed, knowing that his younger colleague would be able to make sense of the conversation, given his greater knowledge of the situation.

 “Come on,” Thorin said to them, getting up as the train began to slow. “This is our gate.”

The train inched up to the platform. “If it helps, he does have a fantastic ass,” Ori said suddenly, grinning cheekily. Bilbo swatted him immediately. “Ori!” he protested, with the rest of his admonishment to shut up lost in the noise of the doors whooshing open.

“Really, burglar,” Thorin said scathingly as he brushed past them and out the doors. “We’re not in the arena yet; save your violent inclinations for when you’ll need it. You have few enough of them as it is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: THE SCRAMBLE  
> 
> 
> On an unrelated note, this chapter was brought to you by my glee at finally [creating a knitting pattern for a cable version of Thorin's princely trim](http://liz-of-all-trades.tumblr.com/post/112928180836/i-did-it-yessss-it-takes-so-so-many-pins-to) in the first movie. I AM VERY PLEASED BY THIS BECAUSE IT HAS TAKEN ME A MONTH.


	4. In Which There Are Guns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Celebrating my birthday Hobbit-style! :) Enjoy!

“All right,” Thorin said brusquely as the Company finished filtering into the tiny holding room, ticket and photo ID presented to the pair of event coordinator interns manning the doors to the station. A fresh trainload of competitors now chattered on the platform. “Let’s review how we’re going to play this.”

“Rough?”  Nori suggested with a leer. He waggled his eyebrows at Dwalin, who snorted.

“We won’t have any maps besides those we’ve studied,” Thorin said, tapping one finger to his temple and utterly ignoring this exchange, “so I cannot give you reliable directions. We’ll have to construct those as we go. Nevertheless, at the start, we will need to cover a lot of ground in there if we want to get our hands on enough supplies to mod fourteen weapons.”

“Or more, with a bit of luck,” Balin murmured.

“Or more,” Thorin nodded gravely. He pulled a bit of string from his pocket and laid it out on the floor in a rough circle, and sketched movements in the air over it as he continued. “Once we enter the arena, we’ll have three minutes to set ourselves up where we will before our shots begin to count. I believe our best bet will be to travel together along the wall immediately to our left as we enter and go as far as we can by the time those three minutes are up. We will set that spot as our rendezvous point.”

“How will we know when the three minutes are up?” Bilbo asked, curious.

“The cuffs provided will vibrate to show they are active,” Thorin said. “Also, the alarms within the arena will go off.”

“Ah,” Bilbo said in the way that says ‘I see.’ He supposed that the arena had a great deal more of infrastructure than he would have thought; though of course nothing would be certain until he saw it with his own eyes.

“From there, we’ll split into three,” Thorin went on. “Dwalin, Kíli, Ori, Bilbo, and Bombur, you are one group. Bifur, Balin, Fíli, Oin, and Gloin, you’re another. Nori, Bofur, and Gandalf, you are with me.”

Fíli and Kíli did not look particularly happy at this, but their grumbles subsided when their cousin raised an eyebrow at them. Nori also looked less than pleased, but his scowl went unremarked upon. Ori, on the other hand, elbowed Bilbo excitedly and beamed, and Bilbo’s dismay at being stuck with Dwalin the Dismal was lightened by the knowledge that he’d have a friend along.

“In a few minutes we’ll be able to select our weapons,” Thorin said, nodding to the curtained racks that stood along one wall. “We’ll get our survival packs as well, though we are not to open them until we are inside the arena. Do _not_ fire in the arena before our three minutes are up; our goal is to cover as much ground as is possible before we break off to raid. We can test fire before we split up, but we do not need to waste time recovering darts if we can help it. Understood?”

Bilbo joined the chorus of yeses, though he wasn’t sure what that bit about the test firing meant, but he supposed his placement with a larger group would help cover any mistakes he made until he found out. No one seemed too bothered by the stricture anyway.

Gandalf nudged Thorin and gave him a Significant Look. Thorin scowled. “Be careful,” he said to the Company. “Nothing’s for sure in this competition, but I have heard ill news of some of our competitors; be very careful in these first few hours and do not let your guard up. Though I grudge saying it, avoid direct confrontation unless it is an easy kill—when we travel together again, we can afford to show force.”

This time, the answering affirmative was quieter. Grimmer, too.

“Let’s do this,” Kíli said, eyes flashing.

“Let’s shove it right up their jacksies,” Ori said enthusiastically.

“Ori!” Bilbo squeaked in shock.

“It is time,” Gandalf interrupted, nodding towards the weapons racks.

The room had filled up quite a bit by this time; there must have been another twenty people milling around, standing in twos and threes and fours. Some wore matching shirts or bandannas. They ran the whole gamut of ages and genders, ranging from a twelve-year-old boy with curly hair to an older woman with steel-gray hair and a leather jacket. As the curtains slowly revealed the contents of the racks, cheers broke out.

Bilbo found it an odd contrast to the seriousness of the Company. The other people in the room had a feeling of excitement and eagerness that did not match the somber fire the members of Thorin’s team possessed. The juxtaposition was only made more obvious by the ceremony of weapon selection that proceeded from there.

“Welcome!” a man with one of the event t-shirts said up at the front, beaming. “It is time….. to CHOOSE YOUR WEAPONS!”

“YEEEEEEEEEEAH!” the contestants roared, sans Bilbo and the older half the Company.

“”We will call teams up one by one to make their selections!” the official proclaimed. “This will be a random selection—may I have the hat, please?”

One of the interns from the door ran up with an elaborate bowler hat and presented it with a flourish.

The man pulled a slip of paper. “The first team to select their weapons is: the Trolls!”

“That’s right!” someone yelled. “We’re first!” A team of three large men hurried to the front, shoving one another as they vied for first pick.

“What kind of weapons do they usually offer?” Bilbo asked Ori, tuning out the proceedings as chatter broke out in the crowd.

“There’s always one of everything,” Ori said, then amended it. “Or at least, one of everything sold currently. Depending on how many competitors are sent to the gate and how many models are currently offered, it usually varies between three and five of each. Then it depends on luck of the draw, what’s actually left when you get called.”

“The Company!” the official cried, reading another slip. “You’re next!”

“Well that’s a bit of luck, then,” Bilbo remarked to Ori, and made his way forward, following a sedate Balin to the front. Fíli and Kíli had raced up ahead of everyone, but Thorin and Dwalin lead the remainder of the team at less of a sprint. “So we’ll still have a good selection to choose from?”

“Hold up,” barked Thorin ahead of them, stopping Kíli from pulling one of the guns off the shelves. “Let’s see what we’ve got to work with.”

To Bilbo, the differences to the guns seemed to be aesthetic. Some were bigger or longer than others; some had strange handles in the front or slidey bits on the barrel or had belts of darts hanging from them. He didn’t have a clue how to work any of them.

“It looks like there’s enough for everyone’s preferences,” Thorin was saying to the group, “so go ahead and grab what you like. Burglar, what is your choice?”

“Um,” Bilbo said, a bit flummoxed. “Any of them, I guess? I’ve never used a nerf gun before.”

Thorin stared at him, then closed his eyes and took a deep, bracing breath while he pinched the bridge of his nose. Bilbo would have giggled at the picture the engineer made if he wasn’t insulted by the gesture. Shooting a toy gun could _not_ be that hard. “Of course not,” Thorin muttered, and shot a glare sideways at the dean. “All right; we’ll give you something with a shorter range, then.”

“This’d work,” Fíli said, pointing helpfully to a smaller model on one of the lower shelves. “Revolving barrel, range of around twenty, twenty-five feet, and it’s easy to use.”

“Take that,” Thorin told Bilbo. “We’ll work on shooting it when we’re in the arena.”

Bilbo sniffed. “Thank you, Fíli,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster, picking up the small gun.

The others had chosen, largely, leaving only Bifur frowning between his two choices; but in seconds he muttered uncomplimentary things under his breath and pulled a long-barreled rifle-type gun off the third shelf. They all then shuffled away from the racks and back to their previous spot as the next team, a group of five, was called forward.

Bilbo held up his little gun for a better look. It had a revolving chamber as Fíli had said, about three inches across. He tried to count how many chambers there were but there didn’t look like there were any buttons to press to make it pop out, and reloading darts one by one through the barrel seemed an incredibly inefficient method—

“You reload by pushing the barrel sideways,” Ori said helpfully, and demonstrated. There were six chambers, each with a blue-tipped foam dart. “Shove it back in like so—yes—and if you want to fire, you pull the trigger—“

“No, really?” Bilbo deadpanned.

“But you have to cock it each time,” Ori continued, “which is this grey part on the top—you slide it back after you fire your shots. No, no! Don’t do it in here! You lose your weapon if you fire it before you enter the arena.”

“This does not seem like an efficient weapon,” Bilbo said, feeling insulted that he’d have such a thing recommended for him.

“That’s what mods are for,” Kíli said, jumping into the conversation with the addition of a reassuring slap to Bilbo’s back. “Don’t worry, me ‘n Fíli can upgrade it for you. We can make it so that it cocks automatically, and bam—semi-automatic killing machine!”

“How do you do that?” Bilbo asked, wincing.

“We add springs,” Fíli said, which answered precisely nothing. “We’ll show you when we’ve got the supplies and time.”

“And position,” Kíli added. “Don’t want to get gunned down in the middle of a job.”

“Anyway, it’s simple,” Fíli concluded, with a comforting slap of his own that was just as painful and unwanted as his brother’s. “We can also improve your range and accuracy—which we will, if we’ve got time.”

“What’d you get, then?” Bilbo asked Ori, nodding to the blue plastic shape his colleague held.

“Oh,” Ori said, holding it up so Bilbo could get a better look. “It’s based off of a ten-shot rifle. The lever here cocks it; it’s got a range of… maybe forty feet? I don’t remember exactly. I’m a terrible shot at close range, so I get the longer-barrel weapons, usually.”

“You’ve got an even longer barrel,” Bilbo said to Kíli, who did in fact have the longest barrel on his gun of anyone in the Company. “What’s yours do?”

Kili beamed. “It’s got a terrific range,” he said gleefully. “Seventy feet is the factory spec; with mods, I can boost that to over a hundred, easily, depending on the materials or tools I have. I’d love to add a motor to this to give it extra power, but that’d take equipment we’re not likely to find out in the field and a lot more time than would be wise.”

“It’d be amazing, though,” Fíli said, looking a little dreamy at the prospect.

“Yours is—is that the clip?” Bilbo asked Fíli, bemused by the gun design. “But why is the handle more—“ He searched for the right words. “Closer to the end? The trigger is on the front half, not in the back?”

“Oh, yes,” Fíli said, and started pointing. “This one has a motor already, you see; it’s this part in the back. The rest of it is a barrel. It’s a semi-automatic—I can mod it into full, but that might not be worth it unless we get a good supply of darts—and I can get it up to sixty or seventy feet in range. I like to dual wield these if I can, and I’ve already memorized who else chose them here. If I see them after those first three minutes—” Fíli drew a finger across his throat with a grin. “And then I’ve got another!”

“Please take your places,” the organizer said over the crowd. Bilbo looked around; everyone was armed, now. “We need three lines, please, facing the door—thanks, Mandi, yes, right there! Everyone look at Mandi!” One of the interns waved helpfully in front of the doors, then gestured to three spots—presumably, where the lines started.

Nori and Thorin had managed to slide into the left-most line already, and Dwalin swiftly joined them; the three glared at the other competitors fiercely enough that it made them hesitant. The indecision allowed the rest of the Company to mass into the line, mobbing tightly enough together that even those few braver opponents who had moved into that space were forced to sort of confusedly shuffle to the spots behind Bombur. The interns started walking up and down the lines, offering small blue and orange backpacks and wide, thick cuffs to every contestant. Bilbo hefted his backpack when it was handed to him, and judged it to be maybe five or six pounds. He followed Ori’s example and slung it over his shoulders, making sure the straps weren’t too tight, before accepting his cuff. This he slid on his wrist, and, copying Ori again, pressed a small circular button that lay flush with the casing; immediately the cuff contracted through some mechanism until it hung only loose enough that Bilbo just twist it easily around his wrist without taking a bit of skin off in the doing.

All too soon, an expectant silence fell over the crowded players; the last backpack was handed out and the interns withdrew to the back of the room. Above the doors, a small screen began a countdown from ten, gaining a verbal chorus from most of the room as the numbers ticked away. The moment it hit zero, the doors swung open to the dark arena, and a klaxon went off, though it was mostly drowned by the cheers echoing in the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this wasn't too rushed. I like getting these out in a few days; I'll try to have the next one by Wednesday night (PST) or Thursday afternoon.


	5. In Which Dwalin Enjoys Military Hand Signals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM VERY SORRY FOR THE LATE UPDATE. Life happened; I got bronchitis as a birthday present. Unbeta'd and a bit hot off the press so details may change at a later time!

Bilbo found himself swept out the door before he knew it. After the bright lighting of Gate Six’s waiting area, the arena’s darkness sent him into conniptions for a moment until he realized that he had been expecting everything to be pitch black, with maybe the faint light of a three-quarters waning moon; but instead, spots of orange light of conventional streetlights dotted the sky and cast ragged islands of dim glow between darker, blacker shapes, like swaying trees whose scruffed outlines quivered in the light breeze and the alternately smoothed and staggered boulders and stone outcroppings.

Someone yanked him to the side, and he realized he’d stumbled farther from the edge of the arena than the rest of the Company. They were a series of dark, muted shapes hurrying through the patches of light and shadow against a cinderblock wall capped at eight feet. The lights were regular there, every five hundred feet, planted on the other side of the wall. Bifur hauled him roughly around back in line behind Bofur without missing a beat, nearly causing Bilbo to trip over his own feet as he staggered forward and sideways all at once.

And then it was a solid, steady trot. Bilbo had never liked running in school, regardless of however many mock battles or chasing games he played as a child, and this was more of that drudgery that physical education merited. He kept his eyes on Bofur’s feet, worried about falling over uneven stony ground or unhelpful tree roots in the terrible light, and managed to keep moving without incident.

Just as Bilbo was starting to get bored (the Company was absolutely silent apart from the pounding of feet and huffing of breath), the cuff buzzed, disconcertingly bone-rattling. Nearly simultaneously, Thorin’s command “Stop!” floated down the line and Bilbo had to dodge to once side to avoid crashing into Bofur.

“Circle up,” Thorin said, closer, and motioned for them to move in. He spoke much more quietly than he had back in the waiting room, which puzzled Bilbo for a moment until he realized it was just another of Thorin’s obsessively serious tendencies with regards to the competition. “Dwalin, take your team and continue along this wall—see if you can find the next gate and anyone coming from there. Bifur, I want you to take yours back the way we came. The rest of you are with me; we’ll head out into the center. I want us to meet back here within an hour’s time.”

Dwalin and Bifur grunted and gestured for people to follow them; it took Bilbo a moment to remember he had been assigned to Dwalin’s team. “We don’t have to do more of that running, do we?” he asked, trying not to sound like he was whining.

Dwalin gave him a severe glare and put a finger to his lips. Bilbo rolled his eyes; this was ridiculous. He exaggerated running in place, stopped, and pointed at Dwalin while raising both his eyebrows in query.

Dwalin’s glare became deadlier, but he shook his head. Ori bumped shoulders with Bilbo and gave him a rather thankful look as Dwalin gestured for them to follow, leading them away from the clearer path against the wall and into the arena, leading them on a route twenty feet out and parallel to the wall. He moved quietly but steadily, only a slightly louder breeze and soft treading, as did Ori and Kíli and Bombur. Bilbo broke a twig with an ill-placed foot within moments, and the set of Dwalin's shoulders indicated that there would be serious Consequences at a later time.

The put-upon English graduate student had to reign himself in with a deep (and quiet) breath, wherein he reminded himself that he had agreed to go along as a Professional Burglar, and that they were expecting his Best, Most Professional Demeanor and Demonstration of Skills. It was hard to convince himself to take that seriously, though, and so he resorted to pretending he was back in the university library at three a.m. evading cameras and security guards for fear of Chief Librarian Erestor’s strict punishments for those who disobeyed library rules. Dwalin did not have cause to glare at him after that!

In between watching his feet and watching Bombur’s back, Bilbo noticed Dwalin wave a fist behind his back, below his waist. He blinked as Dwalin repeated the gesture, deftly slid between two oak branches without rustling the leaves, and thought hard—he didn’t remember anyone going over hand signals, and they weren’t supposed to talk—Ori tugged him to the side, out of line, and pointed forward at Bombur before moving around Bilbo to stalk (stalk! Ori, stalking!) roughly three or four feet behind Dwalin on his right hand side. Bombur had taken a similar position, but to Dwalin’s left. Ori, without looking back, pointed a finger at Bilbo, and then pointed to a spot behind Ori and directly to Ori’s right. Bilbo shot a look to see what Kíli was doing, just in ca—oh yes, he was behind Bombur and the closest to the wall. Bilbo could see his teeth reflecting that dull orange light what with the rather fiendish grin the young man was sporting.

If Bilbo took the position mirroring Kíli’s (putting him the farthest into the arena and in the darkest shadows—too far from the inner light posts and far enough from the ones on the wall—), Bilbo thought swiftly as he moved to do precisely that, then the five of them took on a rough V shape, like a line of geese flying south for the winter. What was that called in the military? Spear formation? Well, whatever it was, it went with that ridiculous hand gesture. Bilbo fixed this in his mind, gloomily certain he’d see it again.

Much though he was loath to admit, Bilbo was actually starting to enjoy this silly venture. Perhaps it was, again, the product of not enough sleep on too bizarre a schedule, but in the darker shadows of the arena, the air was cool and sweet. It smelled like green things and earth that had finally started to lose the heat the day had baked into it. The silence was unlike the static echo of the empty Literature department halls and the perpetual buzz of the city. Altogether, it almost reminded Bilbo of the Shire, and home; and if there were less light posts and he could get a better view of the sky, he could almost believe he was stargazing with some of his more irrepressible cousins on the top of his family’s smial some warm not-yet-summer night.

Such a lack of attention as to slip into remembrances of happier times was, of course, the precise moment to bring Bilbo a rude reminder that he was nowhere near the Shire and stargazing was not why he was up so late outside. There was a loud crash and a brief shriek, sharply cut off as though the maker had not intended to let it out at all. More crashing noises followed and some eager shouts of “Yeah!” and “Get ‘im! _Get ‘im!_ ” followed.

It was about this point that Bilbo realized Ori was frantically gesturing for him to get down that he also realized everyone but him had taken cover in the tall grass or the fat, squat oak that had twisted into an excellent playground for small children by the wall. Just as Bilbo registered that he was, in fact, the only person still upright, a klaxon went off and nearly scared his socks off.

“Team WOLFPACK has been eliminated,” a tinny voice announced from the same place the klaxon had sounded. Bilbo, busy watching a fiercely-glowering Dwalin, found it absolutely disconcerting. He put the matter from his mind and watched as Dwalin carefully (and angrily) repeated a series of hand signals. He pointed to Bilbo and then put his hand over his head. When Bilbo made his “I’m sorry but I really really don’t understand you” face in response, the big man pointed sharply at him, then to the area where the Klaxon had sounded. He started to repeat this part again when Bilbo didn’t immediately start off, but the graduate student finally realized he was supposed to scout up ahead with Kíli, who was already slinking away, clearly uncaring of whether or not he had backup. Bilbo made for him double time, leaping silently over Dwalin _just because_ and darting into Kíli’s footsteps without further delay.

Kíli didn’t even appear to realize Bilbo was shadowing him, which was just fine with Bilbo; if his teammate didn’t realize he was there, then it was probable that whoever was up ahead wouldn’t see him either. He had found quite frequently that people simply never _looked_ , and so it was rarely difficult to go unnoticed. Bilbo attributed this to the stupidity of people in general rather than any special talent he possessed.

Neither of them wound up being seen, though, when they came upon the sad remnants of Team Wolfpack (two girls and four boys, one of whom was very young and crying; Bilbo spared the briefest of moments to reflect that for a competition in danger of running out of contestants, there really were a lot of people taking it too seriously) unhappily divesting themselves of backpacks and weapons. The culprits were a smug-looking pair of brunette twin men Kíli’s age. Kíli turned after scanning the area and startled at seeing Bilbo beside him, before beaming with approval. He pointed at the scene in the clearing, pointed to Bilbo, and then jerked his thumb over his shoulder back the way they’d come.

Bilbo took a second’s consideration and shook his head; he had no idea how he’d tell any of this to Dwalin, who would be extremely disapproving of daring to whisper. Also, he was _definitely_ sneakier than Kíli. He pointed to Kíli and made the thumb-over-his-shoulder motion, to which Kíli scowled and looked as though he’d argue; Bilbo put a finger over his mouth in the standard “shh” gesture, and then shooed him away, deliberately turning back to face the clearing.

Kíli kicked him lightly in the shin, but went. In the clearing, one of the men was sharply criticizing the defeated time’s slow disarmament speed; clearly sulking, the younger girl opted to throw her gun on the ground. Neither of the two teenagers with her seemed to mind in the slightest when it bounced at an odd angle and smacked the man in the leg.

Wolfpack straggled out of the area, heading towards the wall before walking along it in the direction that Bilbo and the four Company members had followed to get out this far. Their point of entry must have been the gate nearby.

“Look at this,” one of the twins said to the other, nudging some of the discarded weapons with a foot. “They didn’t choose very well, did they?”

“That one girl had a very pointed shot,” groused the other, rubbing his temple. “I’m two hits down from her alone!”

The first one started to unzip the backpacks and rifle through the contents. “Hah!” he said, pulling out a large white square. “They had a medic pack—ow!”

“Shit,” cursed his brother as a hail of darts struck the pair. Bilbo flinched back as both attempted to aim at the culprit; he ducked, realizing one of the shooters must be behind him. He looked wildly behind him as another klaxon sounded, but bounding forward out of the cover of the trees was only Kíli, looking triumphant. Not too far away, Ori skittered at the edge of the clearing, looking faintly apologetic.

“Team ELOWOW has been eliminated,” the tinny voice said. This time Bilbo was able to pinpoint the small speaker stuck to the side of a tree from which the klaxons and announcements came.

Dwalin, suspiciously keeping an eye on the trees, went straight for the same heap of packs and weapons the twins had been sorting through. “Thank you,” he said, gruffly sarcastic, and scooped the discarded white square. He tucked it into a pocket and tossed two packs to Ori, who looped them over one shoulder. Kíli swiftly condensed the contents of the remaining backpacks into two of them, which went to Bombur, and just as swiftly stuffed the empty packs with the discarded weapons.

The twins took their time dropping their things, complaining loudly as they did so, but nevertheless Kíli was just finishing his work by the time they stalked out after Wolfpack. Kíli handed both of the packs with weapons to Bilbo, Bombur took the other two, and Dwalin and Kíli both hastily grabbed one of the twins’ bags. Dwalin waved his gun in a tight little circle next to his head; apparently they were back in quiet mode.

“It means we go back to our rendezvous spot,” Ori hissed in his ear. “Come on, come to the middle with me. Shit.” Dwalin looked like he was ready to massacre the both of them.

Kíli shoved them forward and trailed in the rear as they hurried away from the area. Bilbo could see the sense in kicking up his heels to double time it out; after how they’d just stolen the Elowow team’s loot and eliminated them to boot, it was clear just how quickly things could change in this arena. He had a feeling this night would be absolute hell with the way things were going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am periodically going through and polishing things as this gets longer. Some details have been or will be sanded/slightly altered, etc. 
> 
> P.S.- Rewatching BOFA in a lower-quality resolution is marvelous for not getting irritated at the CGI.


	6. In Which Love Is A Battlefield

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPRIIIIIIIIIIING BRRRRRRRREAAAAAAAAAK

“‘Just a breakfast,’ he said,” Bilbo muttered viciously as he dove behind a boulder under a hail of nerf dart fire, “‘meet some friends, discuss this proposition,’ WHERE DOES FULL-ON WARFARE FIT INTO THAT??”

“Where doesn’t it?” Fíli said gaily, vaulting to the top of the granite slab and aiming at the mob of ugly, green-shirted teens and twenty-somethings below, using twinned sidearms with devastating accuracy. Shrieks reminiscent of Bilbo’s floated through the pinking, late afternoon sky.

A loud _whump_ marked Dwalin’s arrival, carrying what looked like a portable cannon. Bilbo didn’t even know when he’d gotten it, or cobbled it together—he could’ve sworn that Dwalin hadn’t had it an hour ago, when Bilbo’d been sent out to scout a new camp location. He wielded it with deadly accuracy, shooting fist-sized projectiles into the mob while adeptly dodging enemy fire.

“We will not retreat!” howled a man. Bilbo peeked over the top of his hiding place and got a glimpse of an immensely fat, middle-aged blob angrily hopping around. The man aimed at Dwalin and got a massive foam disc to the neck, though his scraggly beard seemed to protect him from the full force; he didn’t fall over, anyway. A klaxon started to wail as Gloin, Oin, and Bifur howled onto the field, a storm of foam axes and pistols that scythed through one edge of the green shirts’ front.

“It’s the _Survival_ Competition for a reason,” Thorin Oakenshield said coolly from behind Bilbo. He stood in the shadow of Fíli’s boulder, taking in the lay of the battle, and stepped out into the sun, bringing his machine gun to bear on the screaming mob. “The Nerf Weapon Tea Party is held at the conclusion of the festivities.”

“Come on, Bilbo,” Ori encouraged, sliding neatly to the spot next to Bilbo behind the rock. “We’ve got excellent cover here—we can take a few shots!”

“Oh, god,” Bilbo said, carried along on the tide of bloodthirsty enthusiasm everyone else seemed to be riding. Feeling a little unhinged, he crept back up the edge of the boulder until he could look over it, Ori right beside him. Taking aim at random, he sent some of his darts into the fray, feeling particularly cheered when a luckier shot got the blob man right in the eye. Beside him, Ori started to giggle maniacally as he systematically shot into the crowd.

“Retreat!” the man from below bellowed a few moments later as Balin and Bofur advanced menacingly in a flanking tactic from the other side. “Retreat!”

Several of the green shirts had already thrown down their things in disgust—they’d been knocked out of the competition, hit too many times too quickly to try to use a medic button and keep in the running. Nevertheless, at least half of the force scattered in their scramble to get out of the Company’s sights.

The klaxon ceased blaring. No announcement followed; the defeated green shirts stalked off, spitting in the Company’s direction and shoving each other out of the way as they quarreled over something or other. Bilbo propped himself higher up on the rock, then lay back down on the sunbaked rock with a relieved whoosh of breath as Ori punched the air in triumph.

Fíli sighed with satisfaction. “I love the smell of disappointment in the morning,” he said dreamily to no one in particular, and slid down the rock to sprawl on Bilbo’s other side. “Do you have a medic button? My hit counter went down to five.”

“Who were they?” Bilbo asked, wondering when his heart would stop pattering in excitement as he dug around in his pockets for one of the white squares. It had been exhilarating, yes, but not _that_ exciting, for goodness sakes! “There wasn’t any announcement about them—”

“Goblins, didn’t you see the shirts?” Kíli said cheerily, coming up on them and giving his brother a one-armed hug. “Watch it, Fí, or you’ll be watching us win on the hotel television by yourself!”

“They only have announcements when the whole team is officially out,” Ori clarified for Bilbo.

“Sod off,” Fíli said to Kíli fondly, and wrestled his brother into a brief headlock as Kíli made noises in outrage. “C’mon we’ve got darts to collect. Bilbo?”

Bilbo got himself up into walking position, dusted his pants off in a belated attempt at propriety, and followed the brothers down to the battlefield as Dwalin stomped over to stand next to Ori’s head and keep lookout. The area was a mess of torn up grass and fresh gouges in the soil, littered all over with little orange and yellow and pink and blue darts. In a bit of a daze, he started picking them up, bobbing up and down rather like some demented red-breast robin as he awkwardly went from hillock to rock.

“I wonder if they found some high tensile springs…? Oh, maybe, some have lengthened their barrels,” Fíli was saying, examining the abandoned guns and bags. “More medic buttons, some lubricant—lots of pre-shrunk foam rods, too. Guess they didn’t have time to make stefans.”

“Or they didn’t have any washers,” Kíli pointed out, peering into some of the backpacks. “Looks like they’ve eaten a lot of the food we were given.”

“Looks like they weren’t carrying much beyond weapons,” Bilbo noted absently, in the middle of realizing that there were more darts on the ground than would fit in his pockets. He slung his backpack across his front and started stuffing them in there instead.

“Likely they have found somewhere to skulk,” Thorin said in his obscenely deep voice.

Bilbo did his best not to think about how absurd he must look at the moment, involved as he was in collecting darts. He reminded himself as he watched their Company Leader idly toe a squashed snack bar that, lovely voice or not, none of them had had a shower since they had arrived in Erebor the day before yesterday and really none of them were actually that pleasant at the moment, let alone pleasant enough to want to speculate about better uses for lubricant than modding plastic toy guns, and so there was no reason Bilbo’s present awkwardness to be off-putting more than everyone was by default to anyone in particular, and even in his head Bilbo was disgusted with how he _obviously_ could not be trusted not to babble.

“We’ll have to clear them out at some point,” Dwalin grunted from his guard position on the rocks. Thorin scowled majestically and flicked his hair over his shoulder with a practiced movement as he turned to speak with Fíli.

So _maybe_ it had been a long two days in the arena, Bilbo reasoned to himself. _Maybe_ Thorin, who was even more ruthlessly militant than before the competition started, was not nearly as off-putting as he should be.  But it was clear Bilbo really couldn’t spend time longing for the comforts of a hot shower or a soft bed when half the time all he really wanted to do was drag their demanding asshole leader into both of them. It was only practical in such a large group with so little privacy—and since Bilbo had thrown out all respectability by sneaking a quick ten minutes to himself behind a bush last night, practicality was the best he could hope for.

“Master Baggins,” Thorin said sharply, snapping Bilbo out of his reverie to realize he was frozen in the act of staring moodily at the collection of darts he had amassed.

“Pardon me,” he said distractedly, trying to parse this glare’s subtext. _You are immeasurably useless and your pocket handkerchiefs can’t save you from the disgrace that is your entire existence_ , probably. “Did you say something?”

“I was asking if you had seen any sign of an encampment large enough for the Goblin teams,” Thorin repeated slowly, not bothering to hide the bite of the growl creeping into his voice.

It was then that it struck Bilbo just how serious Thorin was about this. Yes, he had been overly obsessive with their planning, and yes, there may or may not be other people following them, and yes, he got a whole group of friends together to fight a nerf war, and yes, he even went so far as to hire a _burglar_ for the job, but it wasn’t until Bilbo saw Thorin evaluating the possibilities of having to strike an encampment of fifty or so people and the practical implications of that task that the grad student’s comprehension of the situation flatlined.

“You’re all insane,” Bilbo declared in surprise at this revelation, instead of answering the more obvious ‘no, I haven’t, or I would have told you already.’ He heard Kíli choke with surprise as he boldly looked Thorin straight in the eye. “You’re taking toy plastic guns way too seriously. Who gets together three or four teams solely for the purpose of banding together unofficially in game? What kind of competition is this?”

There was a moment of deathly quiet; even the birds seemed to stop twittering in the distance. Bilbo awkwardly realized they were now at the center of attention. As Thorin’s startled face turned murderous, the grad student hastily added a more polite version of his original thought. “No, but we haven’t ventured into the area south of this yet.”

“I suggest it is time you prove your worth to us and do so,” Thorin replied curtly after another long moment of tense silence from the rest of the Company. Bilbo refused to break off the staring contest regardless of the flush he could feel burning his skin, though, until Fíli muttered something to his brother and the rest of the Company seemed to unfreeze.

Bilbo busied himself to cover his embarrassment. He shoved his last handful of darts into his bag and zipped it up, and thought for a moment. He squinted up at the sky, checked the time on his cuff, and guesstimated that they had another two hours before sunset, which was really the optimal time for this sort of thing, but he would make do. He hadn’t been out scouting by himself, yet, but he had a fairly good mental map composed of what they’d seen thus far, so he wasn’t too worried about getting lost.

“Shall I meet you here, or will you be moving elsewhere?” he asked, plotting a route in his head.

“Elsewhere,” Thorin said coldly. “Until we know more about the Goblins’ territory, we’ll move away from here and back into ours. Range through the south; we’ll spend tonight in that stand of oak where we trounced that team of couples.”

Bilbo sighed, concluding he would need to do some things first in order to ensure proper sneaking. “Oh, very well,” he said, setting his bag at his feet.

A trek in the day would need a different shirt, first. Bilbo felt through one of the large pockets on his sturdier and hopelessly ugly, stained gardening trousers. He’d brought them along for the (projected) rough and tumble life of the arena as well as their carrying capacity; they had several massive pockets he’d filled with some spare things he’d thought would be both handy and not against the rules. It had been a treat getting them through the gate security, but since he hadn’t been carrying anything that could easily (or obviously) be used in the modification of nerf weapons, he’d been waved through.

Now, Bilbo pulled out his spare shirt. The one he’d been wearing was a dull maroon color, which was perfect for sneaking in dark areas: the matte red absorbed light instead of reflecting it, and did not do so in the eye-catching unnaturally absolute vacuum of black. His spare shirt was a grimy-looking plaid, a mix of beiges, olive greens, and golds, which, though not perfect, blended with the dry grass and dust of the arena’s terrain better than the red did. Bilbo sniffed as he pulled it on over his rather filthy undershirt, thinking of Gandalf’s camouflage; he wasn’t a total imbecile and he knew the benefits of breaking up one’s outline, but for heaven’s sakes, this was not an actual combat zone and the old meddler could have some class.  

He did up half the buttons before briskly rolling up the old shirt. In the act of stowing it in his backpack, he caught Thorin giving him an unreadable yet strangely flush-inducing look, which lingered on the undone buttons. Thorin nearly instantaneously turned to ask a question of Bofur, but did so with all the haste of someone trying to obscure the fact that they had been caught looking at someone who noticed them. Bilbo put his shirt away with a heart absurdly lighter than it should have been.

Adding a handful of darts to the now-emptied pocket and holding on to another six, he made sure everything was securely fastened or closed and held his bag to Ori. “Would you mind carrying this for a while?” Bilbo asked apologetically. “It’s difficult to sneak around now that my water bottle’s half empty.”

“Can’t compensate for it?” Ori teased. He’d seen Bilbo sneak into the Head Librarian’s office while carrying a full cup of tea on a matching saucer without spilling a drop as part of a dare one very drunken night two years ago, and was already adjusting the straps of the bag so that it could comfortably hang across his front.

“You know me,” Bilbo said wryly, quickly reloading his nerf pistol. “Why do it the hard way when I don’t have to?”

“Not without a cup of tea first,” Ori agreed.

“Oh, absolutely.” Bilbo sketched a sloppy salute in the general vicinity containing both Ori and Thorin. “I’ll find you in time for dinner!”


	7. In Which Bilbo Pens A Love-Sonnet To The Arena

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Luckwearer, _it would._

The first day and a half (maybe closer to two) of being in the arena was a time for terror, lots of plastic weapons, an absurd amount of enthusiasm from those who liked modding weaponry, exciting discoveries of material caches, and the thrill of absolutely annihilating everyone in Thorin & Company’s path.

For Bilbo, it had also been a wonderfully enjoyable experience in exploring lovely new and interesting terrain. Even as a child he had thoroughly worn out his parents with his constant penchant for wandering off to see what new things could be discovered in the Shire; now, all that practice was put into good use at the Nerf Weapon Survival Competition in Erebor.

It seemed like all the other members of the Company had memorized (or at least seriously studied) maps of the arena before they had even set foot in Erebor. Bilbo had not had that luxury, as none of them had seen fit to print out or bring any along; moreover, it appeared (after he had pickpocketed Fíli’s smartphone) that there were no maps online, or at least none that could be discovered with a cursory search. When asked, Balin admitted that the Lonely Mountain Adventure Park did not permit maps of their arena to be distributed publically and strongly disapproved of those distributed privately; the maps the Company shared were cobbled together from the collective memories of Thorin, Balin, Dwalin, and the rest of their families.

Nevertheless, Bilbo had put together a rough sketch of part of the arena from their activities so far. They’d started at Gate 6, in the northwest, which was situated on a bit of a rise in the middle of a low part of the arena. To the north was Gate 5, which was bordered by short cliffs almost all the way around—tough luck for the contestants who’d entered there, and had only one general direction they could head to get further in unless they fancied trying the steep rocky slopes of treacherously tumbled granite. The outcome of the teams Wolfpack and Elowow from the first night appeared to have been the norm for what happened at that gate, as the Company had found a few teams who sat on surprising amounts of supplies and a lot of abandoned weaponry and backpacks in that vicinity. Gate 4, which was set into the perimeter wall near where it stepped its way up the cliffs surrounding Gate 5, had not been used as an entry point for contestants, and the pickings there were both slim and primarily from teams who had come from Gate 3 directly to the south or refugee teams from Gate 5.

All of that was the lowland, from what Bilbo could see in the daylight. The areas to the south beyond the shallow valley (though really, it wasn’t much of a valley, but Bilbo wasn’t sure what else to call the narrow strip bordered on all sides by heights) housing Gates 3 through 6 sloped up much higher than Gate 6’s elevation point, and higher still than the cliffs of Gate 5. Today’s skirmish with the Goblins had been on the southern slope heading up into the highlands, somewhere (here Bilbo approximated, as he wasn’t entirely sure, but he’d always had an excellent head for directions and a great knack for remembering everywhere he’d wandered so he was fairly certain) almost directly southeast of Gate 6.

Bilbo planned to follow the ridged southern slope of the battle south a ways, before looping back through the lowland between Gates 3 and 4. He doubted he would see much in the latter part, as the Company had been very prolific in their systematic clearing of the teams from those areas, but one never knew; and besides, he had to get back to the team somehow.

As Bilbo quietly began to scout, making full use of his slight stature to effectively slide and hide between rocks and bushes, he marveled at the absolute beauty of the land within the arena. Maps and verbal directions simply could not describe it adequately. Bilbo had seen a little of the lovely foothills surrounding Erebor and the single great mountain that was the city’s signature landmark on the ride in, and it had not prepared him in the slightest.

The arena was _huge_. It sprawled over one of the foothills and possessed a sense of vastness completely at odds with the inherent silliness of the competition. Get plastic guns, try to outlast your competitors—yes, fine; but that was the sort of enterprise Bilbo privately thought best suited to cheesy, black light mazes, or the commandeering of the neighborhood park. Here was a sense of _space_ ; of endless possibilities and wonder that one could never find in any city. This, Bilbo knew, was a place for _serious_ adventure—the kind of adventures that Shape Lives while they happen and have Great Consequences when they conclude.

The land was gilded in tall dry grass. All over were great green oaks that an eight-year-old Bilbo would have wept in delight to climb, standing here solitary and there in clusters or groves, and all of them set like gleaming emeralds in the golden slopes.  Large granite outcrops of stone studded the soil like raspberries and raisins in a muffin, and provided nice vantage points for scouting the area (though Thorin was a dreadful bore whenever anyone tried to use them for that reason and insisted they crawl up and squirm around so as not to be silhouetted against the sky and inadvertently give away their position to other competitors). The autumn sun warmed everything just to the point of discomfort in the day, yet cool breezes provided wonderful respite from the heat. Lizards and mice flourished; hawks wheeled high overhead; and the burrows of ground squirrels proliferated as the squirrels themselves abounded.

In short, it was utterly unlike the Shire’s softly rolling green hills and rounded doors, bright flowery gardens, and burbling river. Bilbo loved it. (Except for the light posts, which stood out rudely against all the natural wonder. Their unassuming weathered appearance and dull practicality mitigated this, but not a lot.)

Very little happened initially as Bilbo progressed on his route south. He followed the ridgeline as it, too, began to rise to true cliffs of a sort. He crept along in the lee of it so that anyone taking advantage of the height to look out over the arena would be unable to see him without serious difficulty. There was not as much cover in the way of scrub as he would have liked, so he stayed low to the grass and moved with absolute silence to compensate.

His decision paid off. Fifteen minutes into his scouting expedition, voices floated from ahead of him. Immediately, Bilbo flattened himself behind a particularly large bush and did his best to blend with the grass, blessing the afternoon sun for providing him with shadows to hide in.

Five young men strolled into view not a moment later. Two wore green shirts, and three wore yellow; if the familiarly putrescent green hadn’t been an indicator they were all Goblins, then the fact that both the shade of green and the shade of yellow used for the shirts similarly reminded Bilbo of mucus was a dead giveaway. He lowered his head, forsaking his sight in favor of invisibility, and listened closely.

“…anyway, then King says ‘e don’t like the way the funny guy looks at ‘im,” one of them was saying to the others. “So’s we sent ‘em off to the Defiler for questioning, and HE gets his answers right quick, let me tell you.”

Bilbo held his breath to cover his surprise, unsure if he’d heard that correctly. The Defiler was the one Gandalf had mentioned back on the little train ride to Gate 6, when he and Thorin had sequestered themselves off in the corner. Ori hadn’t known anything about him when Bilbo asked him later, but here was an opportunity to find out more if he was careful…

“You know his freatinin’ ways. Gets ‘em all surrounded by Orcs in their warpaint and holds ‘em at gunpoint. ‘Course, they’re so scared it’s like they’re real guns!”

“Yeah, but ‘ave you seen the mods he’s come up wiv’ already?” another broke in. “Three times the power, at least! And he double-weights his stefans.”

“Makes sure they have sharp ends, too,” a third grunted. “One of those Orcs took a shot at me and it fuckin’ drew blood, the bastard.”

“Anyway,” the first Goblin continued, “he gets this one in front of ‘im and has him singing like a little bird. Turns out, he _did_ remember seein’ that Oakenshield bloke. Came from the same gate or somefin’. So’s the Defiler, he says, well, what gate was that?”

Bilbo had a bad feeling about this.

“Gate 6, the bird answers. And Azog makes very certain of this answer, he does, and then that’s the end of that.”

A _really_ bad feeling about this.

“So that’s why we’re going through the north part of the arena tomorrow morning?”

The reply, if any, was lost; they had walked too far past Bilbo. It was just as well, though, as he was finding it hard to keep his breath quiet and steady as he thought through the implications of that conversation. Tomorrow the Goblins would be searching for them; possibly even earlier, if these ones hadn’t been aware of the earlier skirmish. Maybe getting a bloodied nose would make them more interested in pushing forward their schedule to hunt down the ones who’d done it. And that wasn’t even counting the news of the Defiler, the person behind the frighteningly hit list style fliers, possibly being the same man who had beaten the crap out of Thorin’s grandfather nine years ago.

Very, very carefully, Bilbo raised his head just a smidge so that he could survey the area around him. Maybe fifteen or twenty yards away were the retreating figures of the Goblins, going back along the path Bilbo had come. This was the second group of Goblins the Company had run into in this area; Bilbo would wager that they held the high ground here in the middle of the arena. Why else would they be traveling in such a nonchalant patrol like that?

Bilbo _had_ to get back—and quickly. He would have cover all along the ridge if he trailed the Goblins back the way he came, but there was no guarantee there wouldn’t be another patrol coming the opposite way; worse, another following close behind. Leaving the cover of the cliffs would mean any patrols on the heights had a chance of seeing him, but he could move more directly for the grove the Company would be in.

He realized the bush he was behind was part of a plethora of scrubby bushes that had edged out the grass in their greed and stretched to cover a good twenty feet. Beyond them, maybe thirty feet away, was a large oak, spread low over the grass. Those and the promise of rockier cover as the ground sloped down were enough for Bilbo.

He edged himself up into a crouch and looked around once more, listening hard for anything vaguely human above him. Either there weren’t any people patrolling that section above him, or they were too high and too far for him to get any scraps of conversation. It would have to do.

Quickly, he glided through the bushes, never allowing his head to get higher than they were. He took advantage of every shadowy patch until he was at the edge of the clear space between the scrub and the oak tree. There he took a last look around, daring one up to the cliff behind him—empty, and clear of people. He darted across the open ground and under the low-hanging boughs of the oak tree, wincing at the faint crunch of dry leaves under his shoes. Creeping to the other side of the oak, he took stock of his position: now forty feet north-ish of the Goblins’ ridge and no sight or sound of anyone else. Good.

The next fifteen minutes followed the same pattern of duck-and-cover, slide, wince-at-dry-brush-crackling, check furtively around, and repeat, though once Bilbo could not reliably get a view of the ridge heights behind him, he did less of the duck-and-cover in favor of a more hurried pace. As soon as he was five minutes away from the Goblin territory, he curved his path sharply to the west and moved parallel with the ridge. He didn’t start feeling safe until he hit the lower lands that the Company had thoroughly dominated.

Though Bilbo had to hide (once, from three beautiful yet scary-looking women in biker leathers with guns lovingly painted over in intricate designs) on the way back, he felt like he had started to pull things together a bit and could actually give a decent report to Thorin. Should he tell him about the Azog-Defiler thing in front of the whole group, though? From the way Thorin had kept it a secret thus far, Bilbo got the idea that he wasn’t too keen on having the rest of the Company know someone had put out a hit on him—though it was also possible everyone else knew and he, as the newcomer, was the only one who hadn’t been told. It would likely be better to tell Thorin privately, though, Bilbo decided, because information with the potential to irritate sensitivities such as revenge streaks founded on brained grandfathers would be better handled quietly.

Or maybe not. Maybe Bilbo should ask Balin or Dwalin to come along, too; he knew Dwalin and Thorin were extremely good friends. The large man was, if such a thing were possible, even surlier than Thorin. They probably spent long evenings brooding over stiff drinks. Possibly, sharing stiff drinks led to sharing other stiff things… Bilbo nearly slapped himself in the face. Not only was that petty and ridiculous of him, for heavens’ sakes there was absolutely _nothing_ there between the two of them! Anyone could see that Dwalin and Nori had something already, anyway. Well, whenever Nori was actually in camp and not tinkering around trying to find dangerous additives to their weapons upgrades or scouting like Bilbo was.

Bilbo wrenched his attention back to the present. Up ahead was a familiar landmark—a tall spar of granite that was slanted over two round, half-buried mounds. Fíli and Kíli had giggled incessantly when the team had first come across it (Ha! Oh, good one, Bilbo) yesterday morning, because despite their many assertions of maturity and displays of impressive physical development, they were actually five and had no idea of what constituted proper comedy. In any case, it was extremely close to his final destination—ah, yes, that was the large stand of oak trees right there—

And that was when the klaxon went off and startled some flighty cooing birds out of the trees.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (...but alas, not yet ;D)
> 
> To all-- stefans, by the way, are what nerf enthusiasts call homemade darts. Usually they're weighted with washers or shot pellets, and can be tipped with anything from felt to rounded hot glue (or pins, if you want to be nasty). I mentioned them in a previous chapter and forgot to add a note!


	8. The Trolls

The only thing that staved off Bilbo’s heart attack at the sounds of a klaxon going off _right where his team was camping_ was the fact that though it shrieked, he did not hear any announcements about teams being eliminated. There was always the possibility that the speaker wasn’t working, or the announcement was not as loud as it should have been, or _something_ —but that brief moment of doubt was enough for Bilbo to get his head screwed (somewhat) back in place.

Later, Bilbo would have no recollection of rushing through the brush of the little grove. He didn’t have the faintest idea whether or not he did so in a professional manner. All things considered it was _probable_ he had been perfectly sneaky, but this had to work in the face of how he nearly met his foam-dart death by tripping over a rock and stumbling into the Company’s campsite.

Fortunately, his quiet yelp happened to coincide with the uproar in camp. Oin, Fili, and Kili swore a blue streak loudly, creatively, and continually for probably a minute after Bilbo arrived. The three of them stood next to the boulder the camp was oriented against, the perfect picture of infuriated disgust, taking their sweet time in vacating the area.

Rummaging through the heap of Company packs and picking through the selection of tools Fili had clearly been using to modify one of his sidearm guns were the three obnoxious fellows from the weapon selection ceremony. The ones who were called first… what were they called? The Trolls, that’s right. (Good lord, first Goblins, now trolls. He was really having a time of it today!) The burglar had no idea where the rest of the Company had gone, but clearly the boys and Oin had been left behind to guard the camp and somehow been caught with their pants down.

Their swearing bought Bilbo precious time – the Trolls’ attention was ensnared firmly by the vituperative distraction provided by the angry men of the Company.  

“All right, all right all ready,” one of Trolls said finally over a particularly violent outburst from Fili a few long moments after Bilbo had ducked back behind a bush to listen in and figure out what to do. “Quit your dawdling and get a move on!”

“We’ll get a move on right into your—” Kili began, before Oin slapped a hand over his mouth and hauled Fili around to march in front of him.

“WE’RE GOIN’ NOW,” he bellowed at the Trolls. “LEAVING OUR BLOODY CAMP FULL O’ TROLLS.”

“What in the world… oh, shit!”

Everyone turned—there were Bombur and Bofur, blinking in shock at the scene before them not five feet to Bilbo’s left. Bofur threw himself backwards as the Trolls brought their weapons up to bear. The rustling brush and crunch of dried leaves of his flight provided the prelude to the elimination klaxon sounding Bombur’s retirement from the arena under a hail of nerf darts from three high-powered, belt-fed weapons.

Oin clapped him on the back in companionable sympathy. “Looks like we get our victory round ahead of schedule,” he told him as Fili and Kili also offered backslap condolences.

“At least I’ll get some decent food,” Bombur agreed.

“Right, then, where were we?” Oin asked the boys.

“WE’RE OFF,” Fili shouted immediately to the north.

“THANKS TO THESE FUCKING TROLLS,” his brother added, facing east.

“THREE TROLLS WHO FUCKING SUCK,” Fili yelled, projecting his shout out ahead of them as the four left the camp.

“THREE TROLLS WITH ONE BIG KNOB BETWEEN ‘EM,” Kili threw out in spite, all disappointed indignation as he trudged out of sight.

“BYE!” shouted someone, and then the camp was (relatively) quiet again.

The fattest Troll spat after them. “Good riddance,” he growled. “I thought they’d never shut it!”

“Oi,” the tallest said sharply. “Don’t go spittin’ on the supplies we’ve got!”

“I can aim,” said the fat one, outraged.

Bilbo tuned them out as they began to fight. He found to his dismay that he was trembling very slightly. The Trolls had begun to settle in, swapping some of the packaged food from the Company’s stores and tinkering with their guns, and Bilbo knew without a doubt that they would not leave until they very well wanted to. It would probably happen sometime after they waited around to eliminate the rest of the team.

The loss of four Company members was a physical shock. Bilbo knew intellectually that teams could lose members and still be in the running for the competition—the Goblins were short several members, after all. It was something again to see it happen to _your_ teammates as opposed to the competition. Bilbo was horrified now to learn that it felt like he had literally lost his friends. The lot of them got to leave this rough and tumble arena and sleep in real beds and have delicious food and drink actual tea, and all Bilbo could think was how the stupid lump in his throat was actually hindering his _breathing_.

No, no, don’t think about that. That isn’t productive. Bilbo determinedly forced himself to take a deep breath. He had to think. There was something important he was missing, and he needed to _think—_

He very nearly screamed when someone tugged at his shirt. Whirling, brandishing his nerf gun, Bilbo nearly smacked Bofur across the face. The artist had a finger to his lips and waved a hand towards himself, the hand signal for _come_.

Quickly, Bilbo followed him until they were both out of earshot of the trolls. “We’re fucked,” Bofur said first, fast. “Four members? How’re we going to keep any more from getting eliminated? Fuck. Fuck!”

Oddly, it was easier to calm down in the face of someone else’s hysterics. “Stop it,” Bilbo said, unconsciously standing up a little straighter and straightening his very grimy wardrobe. “We’ll just have to warn the rest of the Company. Where did you all go when you came here?”

“Gandalf and Thorin had an argument,” Bofur told him. “Gandalf went stalking off somewhere west-ish. Thorin broke everyone up to go sweeping the area to make sure there weren’t any lingering opponents lurking about—he took, ah, Balin and Ori with him and they went north-ish. Dwalin and Nori went off somewhere, but I don’t remember where. Bifur and Gloin headed east. But they’re all spread out—we’ll never get to them all in time…”

“What if we patrolled the perimeter?” Bilbo asked. “Just around the edge of the trees. If we’re patrolling enough, we’ll be able to catch most of them, and then they can help us patrol until we’re all together again.”

“It’s better than nothing,” Bofur said, and he left Bilbo grimly for the treeline.

Bilbo made sure his little pistol was loaded and cocked before heading in the opposite direction. He found the treeline seconds later and followed it nervously, keeping to the shadows. Their part of the field may have been thinned of opposition, but that had been equally true when the Company set up camp and they could all see how that turned out.

But he was remarkably lucky, and ran into Nori and Dwalin before he’d gone even a quarter of the way around. It was rather obvious why they hadn’t been paying much attention to the ruckus in the grove by the way they both slunk out from behind some tumbled boulders with furtive looks in all directions and surreptitious adjusting of garments maybe fifty yards away. Were Bilbo the same graduate of several days ago, he would be very scandalized by the situation, but given the current circumstances of probable team elimination he was quite happy.

“Hsst!” he said, to catch their attention, and waved them close when they both startled and snapped around to look at him. “Hurry!”

It did not take long to relate the fate of the brothers, their medic, and poor, sweet Bombur, though Bilbo chose to keep the news about the Goblins to himself for the moment; no need to add to the drama already unfolding. While Dwalin swore furiously (under his breath, thankfully), Bilbo went on and briskly updated them on his and Bofur’s plan, eventually shooing them off to make their own patrol in Bofur’s direction.

Unfortunately for Bilbo, they were the only Company members he came across before he met Bofur skittishly darting from shadow to shadow. Bofur was glum, for he hadn’t seen anyone at all, but continued on his route to backtrack Bilbo’s trail.

Bilbo met Nori and Dwalin nearly back where he had started, and the three of them were exchanging nods when Bifur and Gloin spotted them and joined the rendezvous. Bilbo was obliged to repeat his report as Dwalin and Nori moved on, and so it was that Bilbo was joined by Bifur and Gloin in his circumnavigation.

On the next rotation, Bofur flagged Bilbo down and let him know that he’d found Ori and Balin, who were both presently being interrogated by Dwalin as to the whereabouts of Thorin as the very important Thorin Oakenshield had gone off to do something vague half an hour ago and had not reappeared.

The lot of them moved swiftly back to regroup with the other four, where Dwalin swiftly took over tactical leadership (much to Bilbo’s relief) and insisted they all move in for a closer perimeter around the trolls, selecting positions in hiding to observe the trolls, while enabling them to have a greater chance at catching Thorin on his way back.

Bilbo found himself sneaking along back beside Ori, who looked much more morose with the news of Fili and Kili’s elimination. He managed to pat him on the shoulder in sympathy; Ori, though much more bookish than the two engineering brothers, still shared a great friendship of the two, and was now stuck being the youngest in the expedition. Then Dwalin signaled for them to split up and Balin beckoned Ori off in the other direction, while Dwalin impatiently glared at Bilbo.

Halfway through setting up the perimeter, Thorin _of course_ walked right fucking into the clearing and froze, one foot in the air, at the sight of the Trolls hunched over the Company’s loot. It was obvious that he had not really contemplated the thought that anyone other than Smaug would get anywhere close to eliminating him or his companions, and Bilbo really could have laughed at the expression of mingled shock and incomprehension on their glorious leader’s face, but then the shortest troll said “Eh Bill, don’t ‘ee look like that one guy on that paper?” and all hell broke loose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and I will update within the week, so DO NOT FRET I WILL NOT LEAVE YOU HANGING FOR LONG!
> 
> I am tremendously sorry about the very, very long wait-- I wound up in the doldrums of seasonal/anniversarial(?) depression, which is when I saw Mad Max: Fury Road and fell madly in love with poor, twitchy, PTSD Tom Hardy Max and decided to write a completely different fanfiction about that. About a month into _that_ , my fiance flew in for a six-week visit and I was very distracted; but he flew back away to Poland on Sunday, and so now I'm going into overdrive to get some serious updates down before school gets really hectic.
> 
> DON'T WORRY, THIS FIC IS NOT ABANDONED. It is too ridiculous for that as it is ideal regular-stress stress-relief for me to write!


	9. In Which There Are Explosions!!!!!

Bilbo regretted not taking the time to inform Dwalin, along with the rest of the Company, about the things he’d learned snooping around the Goblins because tackling Dwalin subtly was incredibly difficult due to Dwalin’s general tank-like build. Nevertheless, Bilbo aimed for the ankles and managed to assist Dwalin in performing a spectacular face-plant into the ground as Thorin’s best friend started his suicidal rescue rush.

“Hold!” he hissed as loudly as he dared, making the hand signal for it and waving it furiously at Bofur, Bifur, and Ori. They hesitated just long enough for the ruckus in the clearing to end, whereupon they all reluctantly backed off to see what happened next. Behind the trolls on the other side, Bilbo managed to catch Nori’s attention and mouthed and signaled the order again. Miraculously, the others stayed put.

Dwalin was getting up fast, obviously angry, so Bilbo took a chance and hauled him down and closer by redirecting his momentum via a grip on his shirt collar. He clapped a hand over Dwalin’s mouth as Dwalin immediately made a furious noise and frantically rattled out “Azog’s put out a hit on Thorin, everyone knows, he wants Thorin to himself and no one wants to cross him by taking Thorin out prematurely so just stay still and wait a moment!”

Dwalin paused, and then, disgustingly, licked Bilbo’s palm in the drippiest, drooliest, most uncouth and _ewwwww_ fashion. The burglar promptly yanked his hand away with a squeak of horror. Dwalin sat up in a more civilized manner, so he took the risk to gingerly wipe the slobber off on his trousers, trying hard not to let the general shock-induced feeling of faintness overcome him at the revolting task.

Dwalin murmured various swearwords under his breath. He was studying the aftermath of the Trolls vs. Thorin match.

Bilbo also looked. No sirens had wailed, so he knew that Thorin had not been eliminated before checking it out, but he was relieved to see him buried under several packs of supplies, upon which the fattest Troll was sitting. The burglar winced; the shade of purple Thorin’s face was slowly turning was not natural at all. He wasn’t sure how sitting on the packs that had been dumped on Thorin didn’t count as physical contact, but there weren’t any other alarms going off, so he guessed that somehow the Trolls had manipulated Thorin into tripping into the pyramid stack and conveniently assisted some of the bags on top of him afterwards, or something. It seemed like quite a bit of delicate maneuvering for a team populated by imbeciles.

The smallest Troll, the one who had recognized Thorin first, was whining. “C’mon, lemme have one of them medic buttons. ‘Ee shot me a lot, I can’t get hit more ‘n a few times now!”

“You already have a medic button, you idiot!” the tallest Troll snarled at him. “You’ve been pilferin’ them from all the packs. Don’t lie, I been watchin’ you do it!”

 The Troll sitting on top of the bags that were on top of Thorin grunted. “Think we should give ‘im some medic buttons? Wouldn’t want ‘im to get eliminated by accident, now.”

“’Ere now, ‘ee can’t get a button if’n I can’t,” the smallest troll objected angrily. “I’m your own team member!”

Something was moving in the shadows around the north edge of the clearing. Bilbo caught a glimpse of grey camouflage—Gandalf! The old professor paused, assessing the scene; then he spotted Bilbo and gave him a Meaningful Look. He pointed at the Trolls and wiggled his fingers, which made absolutely no sense at all, and then slipped behind a bush.

“What does it mean when you wiggle your fingers?” he whispered to Dwalin.

“How?” Bilbo imitated the signal Gandalf had used. Dwalin frowned.

“That’s an explosion,” he whispered in answer. “But where—?”

Bilbo interrupted him, not bothering with the hand signs. “Get ready to rush into the clearing,” he hissed. “I don’t know what kind of explosion it is, but come in then. Pass it around to the others and we’ll take them by surprise!”

Without waiting for Dwalin’s response, he marched into the clearing, nerf pistol awkwardly holstered in a belt loop. “Good evening,” he announced loudly, cutting through the whining of the smallest Troll, nodding briskly to the fat one and the tall one while making his way over to the pile of packs.

All three Trolls gaped at him. Bilbo had noticed that their reaction time, when not already pointing a gun, was rather slow, and gambled on lengthening that span of indecision. Gandalf, he figured, could use a world-class distraction to set up whatever he was setting up, and it would give Dwalin time to spread the warning around to the members; if nothing else, Thorin had no idea that an explosion was coming, and so if Bilbo could subtly let him know ahead of time it would prevent their esteemed leader from being entirely bamboozled.

...He hoped. Bilbo would also, obviously, have to avoid being eliminated himself with this ridiculous play. But he shoved that out of his mind because it was hardly professional to faint in the midst of a gambit like this!

“I’m sorry, do you mind?” he asked politely to the fattest Troll on the packs, motioning towards his own. “I know this simply isn’t done,” he added apologetically, as the flummoxed Troll sort of opened and closed his mouth like a fish doing that underwater breathing thing, “but I appear to have lost my handkerchief and I really need to access my spare.”

The tallest one came to his senses first. “Wait a minute—” he began, before Bilbo ran it right over with a chatty “I’m so sorry, gentlemen! I’m sure you know the problems of the arena, what with losing handkerchiefs and whatnot. It’s so terribly inconvenient!”

The idiotic small Troll was distracted enough from his whining to agree. “It is a terrible inconvenience,” he said sympathetically, utterly mangling the five syllables despite Bilbo’s impeccable pronunciation for him to emulate. “Usually it means I need to use my shirt. But then I ‘aven’t brought an extra shirt, so it’s all a mess.”

Bilbo swallowed down his revulsion and looked at him with commiserating appeal as he spread his arms a bit beseechingly (for dramatic and distractive flair) and surreptitiously wiggled his fingers with the hand closest to Thorin. “Yep, that’s it,” he managed to squash out. “That’s… you’ve hit the nail on the head. I really don’t want to dirty my shirt any more than it already is.”

“’old on now,” started the tall one angrily, as the fat one wavered between guarded animosity and passive acceptance. “You think you can just waltz right in here? What, d’you take us for fools?” He emphasized the last with a drawn, aimed weapon that he jabbed ferociously in Bilbo’s direction.

“Me?” Bilbo stammered, trying to keep it loose and confident. Ha! Loose and confident in the face of adversity, yes. He’d like to inquire who the fuck ever thought that was a good idea, he thought privately (and nervously), trying very, very hard not to start discretely retreating. “I don’t take you for anything at all—save, save for fine, understanding fellows—”

“And I take you as fools!” Gandalf boomed, disembodied, and there was a clap of thunder and a brief, searing burst of light that left Bilbo with spots in his eyes.

Immediately he flattened himself on the ground and inched himself up against the pile of bags with desperate little wiggles as the Company members burst out from the bushes with battle cries and a hail of foam ammunition. He wrenched at the pistol until it was free of his belt loop and held it at the ready, but he could honestly do very little until his vision cleared and the battle was over before the splotches had entirely faded from his sight.

The siren wailed and the cool voice announced the elimination of the Troll team. Bilbo could tell from the general cheer of the Company’s banter that they had come out unscathed (save the four lost prior to the skirmish), which was definitely a plus.

On the other hand, he was still having problems seeing, and got to sit for another minute more next to the pack pile rubbing a grimy sleeve over his eyes and willing them to readjust whilst the others liberated Thorin from his near-smothering and gratuitously applied medic buttons to bring him back up to stat.

Bofur and Bifur politely helped Bilbo to his feet and dusted him off when the outlines of things became clear again.

“That turned out well in the end,” Bofur commented, looking relieved. “I can’t believe you had the gall to walk right in the middle of ‘em, though! You’ve got some serious stones, there.”

“Thank you,” Bilbo said with dignity, secretly, slightly mollified. He cleared his throat and turned the conversation humbly from his own grand personage with an appropriately nerf-enthusiast topic. “Was there a good haul? What loot did we get?”

Balin, Dwalin, Thorin, and Gandalf were all locked in conference, he noticed, as Nori and Gloin gleefully answered him with technical terms like ‘N-Strike Mega Series’ and ‘Zombie Chainsaw _with SOUNDS’_ and ‘screwdrivers! Thank god, we really needed some Phillips.’ Before he could attempt to eavesdrop, Dwalin had gestured at him and they were all staring at him—Balin and Gandalf with interest, Thorin with outright skepticism.

Oh, joy, he thought with a great deal of mental eyerolling as Thorin gestured curtly for him to join them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ANOTHER FAST UPDATE CUZ I PROMISED THERE WOULDN'T BE A LONG CLIFFHANGER, YEAH!!! 
> 
> Dunno when the next update will be, but after I update [...], which is already a third of the way there!


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